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A reinterpretation of the iconic

Halo CE Loading Screen

with modern tools

Art Direction

Me
Code

Me & Claude

About

The video game Halo↗ for the first Xbox was a weirdly influential to me. In many ways, but for this project: Its loading screen.

All games in the series had great loading screens, but the moody eeriness of the first one↗ is still my favorite.

This is my own riff on it.

Original shader texture — This is the – slightly adjusted – texture used by the shader ...

Result using the texture — ... and this the result (before applying masking partially)

Input Texture

Thanks to the Halo Mods Discord community↗ I discovered the original texture used on Xbox to create the loading effect.

Screenshot of the Godot game engine running the shader — Built in Godot: I recreated the shader from scratch in the lovely Godot game engine↗

Detail original shader — Comparison: The original was soft and bloomy. I want to mine to be more gritty and fire-y.

Detail my shader — Comparison: The original was soft and bloomy. I want to mine to be more gritty and fire-y.

Other Textures

Since it uses a simple texture as an input, we can easily transform other images.

Concept art for the Halo 3 Map Snowbound — Concept Art of "Snowbound" ( courtesy of Halo Studios↗)

Concept art convert to edge texture — Edge detection using the Scharr algorithm↗ ( online tool↗)

Concept are transformed through shader

Conclusion

I set out to recreate the shader one for one, but "thinking through making" led me to create my own. I am really proud of how it turned out.

Design work

Experiments, Art & Code

Writing

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